Posted: Sunday, January 4, 2004 12:00 am
LARAMIE (AP) - The Albany County fire district has agreed to provide liability insurance for its volunteer firefighters for the first time - but the process won't be as easy as firefighters thought.
Volunteers crews said they were led to believe last month that they would get liability coverage immediately after submitting one application to the Local Governmental Liability Pool.
That never happened.
Tim Sullivan of Fire District 1 said the process is much more complicated, and will involve each department submitting its bylaws for inspection by an LGLP attorney.
"What we have to determine to be a member of the LGLP is, they have to be a governmental entity," LGLP executive director Monty Lower said. "So we have our attorney look at their bylaws to see if they fall under the definition of a local governmental (entity)."
The process, Lower said, depends on the amount of time needed by the attorney to review the bylaws and make a determination.
"It could be days. It could be weeks. It could be months. It depends on how busy (the attorney) is," Lower said.
The LGLP has received bylaws from the Centennial Valley Fire Department. Other volunteer chiefs said they planned to submit their information in the next few days.
Currently, only the equipment used by Albany County volunteer firefighters is covered by insurance - not the firefighters themselves.
"This is the way it's always been. … We've never had liability insurance," Sullivan said.
"What this policy will do is (provide) a $5,000 deductible … for every incident," he said.
The policy will go into effect after the LGLP determines the eligibility of every volunteer department.